Hi Daniel,
Les Richardson wrote:Yes, I continue to toil alone in the pit of software development for school admin software. And, yes, alone, little can be accomplished in a short time.You're doing great Les. In Engineering you only get a maximum of two of the following three things: good, fast, cheap. We'll give up fast. Note that M$ does none of the three :-)
Thanks. Yes, agreed.
Say, it turns out that the middle school my daughter will be at next year is piloting TeacherEase this year. Pretty pricey stuff, $65 to $90 per teacher depending on volume. Here's what the school says they can do with it: "You can login and access your child's subjects, assignments, and progress. From time to time you may also receive email for good grades, missed assignments, behavior, etc."
Doesn't OpenAdmin do most of this too?
Yes, you can view (as the parent) their attendance, report cards, and teacher gradebook (for your child's subjects) currently.
In order to add automated email's would be very simple. It's just that no one has asked for it. I try not to build stuff nobody wants.
The other issue is that I work _with_ people. The development process is an interative one. Someone asks for a feature.... I come up with some ideas that fit in with overall OA objectives (which include simplicity). I write some code, they test it; we make changes until they're happy. This is then put into the updates area (or part of the next release).
I don't build to a spec sheet (even though that would look sexy and 'sell' more software...) I could also make it look 'pretty' by using more graphics (ala MS) and sell it that way. Howver, graphics are slow in a web environment and folks on dialup would not get acceptable performance if they were teachers working on their gradebook or doing their attendance from home. It's all a tradeoff and I don't really have to make the tradeoffs that commercial implementations must...
Let me know IF you want automated email (and it would really be useful to the school and parents). It would increase the (already steep) installation curve for OA since you would need an email enabled Linux/Unix server.
I could easily add this to the demo site, if serious. Les Richardson Open Admin for Schools http://richtech.ca/openadmin
The last item, automatic email to parents, is the only feature I think OA lacks, but is it on your roadmap? I'd like to offer the teacher who is coordinating the pilot the chance to try out OA as well.Daniel -- Daniel Howard President and CEO Georgia Open Source Education Foundation